Sinclair ZX81 Cassette No 1
Reviews Summary Your Computer Issue 3 Sinclair's ZX-81 programs are neatly packaged, with smart library cards and brief but adequate instructions in tiny print. As I mentioned, there is now also a little glossy booklet with more information and some listings. Alas, I cannot back up Tim Hartnell's comment — Your Computer, June/July, page 14 — that the software is pretty too. The first problem one meets is that the Sinclair programs are not easy to load. In fact, with some, I have to report total failure. That was despite having several copies and making indomitable attempts to succeed over several weeks. There is no excuse for Sinclair, with a high-volume market in its net, to produce unreliable cassettes. One supplier has managed to provide us with perfection in this context — Sinclair does its excellent hardware a dis-service in failing us here. Secondly, the programs themselves fall on average only just on the plus side of mediocrity. There are some excellently novel ideas, and some excellent implementations, but there is plenty of poor-quality stuff on the other arm of the balance. The five cassettes so far launched cover education — 1K and 16K — games — 1K and 16K — and household — 16K. That gives a total of 28 programs for slightly less than £20. The standard Sinclair cassette price of £3.95 is certain to have a major influence on the cost of commercial ZX software. The educational material is patchy in quality. Some of the programs are novel, but as a teacher, I would not be happy to use them all with pupils. In particular, the question of educational level has received inadequate attention — but also the formatting and graphics tend to be uninspiring, so that users are likely to start to yawn very quickly. Still, some of the 16K material is definitely worthwhile. The games are not bad — as long as one has never tried Atari or watched the displays in the railway buffet. ZX-81 games can never approach the excellence of the modern dedicated video material — the machine lacks colour and sound and the programmers still need to gain considerable animation experience. If one wants to spend much time gaming with a micro, the Atari and Vic are the machines to choose, even if they are significantly more costly. Sinclair's business and household pack satisfies the company's need to offer something for the serious commercial user — even if only the very small business in the first instance. I doubt if many small businessmen will have the patience I had in trying to load this excellent-sounding software. The program promises to be so good that I spent considerably more than an hour on my three copies of the set — and I failed to load even one. Telephone gives storage of up to 50 personal records, with search allowed in seven fields. Notepad seems to be similar but the fields are user-definable. Bank Account is "a sophisticated financial-recording system with comprehensive documentation". I could not test the first part of that statement, but agree that the documentation is, for Sinclair, unusually comprehensive. It should not be long before Sinclair extends its range of software; it is no secret that more material is in the pipe-line. It is crucial, however, that the company solves the loading problem first. C+VG Issue 2 When there's only 1K of memory to play with, the programmer is faced with a real challenge. Sinclair have come up with six games for its ZX81 and, although the games are necessarily simple in concept, Games Pack No. 1 represents good value at £3.95. The software package consists of a C12 tape with three games on each side, along with program loading instructions and a short but descriptive summary of the actual playing instructions. I particularly enjoyed the Orbit and Meteors games which involve, in the first case docking your spacecraft with cargo — rather tricky; and avoiding meteorites for as long as you can in the second game. Sniper and Wolfpack are both games for those of us with bloodlust! Sniper involves making 40 sequential pot shots at a randomly appearing figure, the final score informing you how many times you managed to kill him. Wolfpack is not a wolf shooting game but, in fact, dropping depth charges on to a submarine, this is again hard to master. The final two games were not so entertaining. Golf asks you to enter a number between 35 and 75 to determine the strength of your drive and see if you can drop the ball in the hole. By the way, don't expect too sophisticated graphics, this is just a line with a hole at one end. Life is another version of the cell generating game. By entering a two letter code you build up a pattern of "cells" and according to several simple rules you can then automatically generate new cells to build up random patterns. There were loading difficulties, but only on side two, and after loading the tape with the 16K RAM pack the problem was overcome. Features Category:ZX81 Games Category:Sinclair Research Category:Your Computer Reviews Category:C+VG Reviews